Liberal Japan

This morning I expressed my dissatisfaction with the comfort women resolution that will soon be put to a House vote in the US congress. [link]

I really like the Trans-Pacific Radio blog, and I remembered that I had read an opinion there about the comfort women issue. I decided I wanted to review what they had written, and did so this morning.

I started writing out a comment that became quite long and … oops … a little tedious. I decided that given the length of my comment, I’d better publish it here instead of in their comment section …

So here is my response. All quotes are from the TPR editorial which was titled Nanjing, Comfort Women, North Korea, and More: Japan’s Taste for Red Herring.

The overwhelming majority of Japanese people today are no more responsible for what Japan did during the War than the average American alive today is. On the other hand, wartime issues in Japan can be maddening for those who like the country and want to see it do well across the board. This is because the default setting of a number of people in power in Japan seems to be to do just what bad guy Japan would have done: lie, mislead, deny - anything to defend the myth of infallibility that many people like to entertain about their own lands.

I agree that this topic is an important one. However, even broaching the topic fuels nationalists sentiments. In China and North Korea some of these nationalist sentiments get filtered through leftist ideologies, but I still regard the sentiments as nationalistic.

It would be wrong to think only a number of people in Japan are lying, misleading, and denying, a number of people in both Koreas, China, America and so on also do likewise. People regularly use, that is abuse, history to support their own views.

There is a real and urgent problem of people subscribing to views solely because they feel they have solidarity with a certain group. Even broaching the subject seems to fuel the solidarity various people feel on both sides of this subject.

This makes progress on the subject extremely hazardous.

Ultimately, I don’t think responsibility for admitting what happened should fall on the Japanese government’s shoulders. You don’t want to entrust the government with something so important, because even if they get it right today, they might get it wrong tomorrow. It may sound funny, but the truth needs to be decentralized.

While I strongly believe politicians should be free to say whatever they like, I think all governments should have it in their constitution that it is beyond the powers of the government to take official stands on history. For the government to take an official view on history is not so different from the government taking an official view on religion.

Determining facts about history is at best, something that needs to happen in court cases when some relevant issue is at stake. Of course, when debating laws and policy politicians will want to express their opinions about history. But there should be no officially accepted state version of history.

In a recent interview with Fareed Zakaria, Sankei Shimbun Editor Yoshihisa Komori, when asked why Prime Minister Abe would claim women had not been forced into prostitution or sexually enslaved, immediately begins splitting hairs. He argues, centrally, that the military itself never directly coerced women. He admits that the military may have contracted brokers, admits that the conditions under which the women lived (I would add: at least partially as a result of how they and their families were treated by Japanese occupation forces) may well have led to there being no choice but prostitution, but frames the argument as one over the extent of the military’s involvement, which is important, but not the central issue.

If it’s true what he says, then shouldn’t we be interested? Why aren’t we? It’s because we suspect he has deeper motives. He’s trying to make certain people look good, when we know they were bad. So what we need to do is make these people look bad, right? Because that’s what they were, right? They were bad.

Do you see the problem? We don’t want fine details, we want blame or it’s opposite absolution. So long as that’s the case truth is no longer important, only what specific facts we can bring to bear on the case that will support our side.

On April 27th, the Japan Times published an AP article explaining that coercion had been used in Allied brothels of the Occupation into 1946. This may be true, but it hardly changes anything. In fact, the allegations, quite possibly true, serve as further evidence of misdeeds on the part of Japan’s government. First, the very articles that mention coercion in brothels set up for American troops include two salient points: that the brothels were set up by the Japanese government, and that the coercion in question was women enslaved for sexual purposes by Japan were then turned around and sold to the Occupation forces.

I think the opposite here. I think this is very incriminating on the American side. I’m pretty sure that nothing was done about this by GHQ or SCAP until numerous soldiers started coming down with venereal diseases. I will try to look into this and get some more information.

One shouldn’t seek to blame another for some immoral act if one has become complicit, until that complicity has been admitted.

Note, this doesn’t absolve any of the actions that anyone may have taken towards the comfort women. It is only to point out the obvious problem of criticizing someone else when one is not entirely free of guilt oneself.

The tack of a number of commentaries seems to be that the Americans had sex slaves, just like Japan. Many commentaries go on to suggest that this means either that the US House should not adopt a resolution condemning Japan’s wartime activities or that what Japan did was really not extraordinarily bad. This is the quintessential red herring. It diverts attention from the topic at hand by pointing to flaws in others, which may be flaws, but have no effect on the original topic. It then conflates or equates disparate elements.

Well, American complicity after the war should certainly give pause to any American who wants America to officially criticize Japan over this issue.

The real issues are, lest some readers should be led astray by red herring: Did the Japanese Imperial Army or did it not torture and kill noncombatants in Nanjing in December 1937 and January and February 1938? And did the Japanese Imperial Army keep a number of involuntary sex workers throughout the War?

There’s nothing wrong with pursuing this, but I do not think it’s the government’s job to make pronouncements about issues like this. But …

Issue a formal, unambiguous apology, from the highest level, the Prime Minister himself, to be promulgated by the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the Foreign Minister, not only for atrocities committed during the War, but for obfuscation afterwards. Governments can and do apologize for the actions of their predecessors. The apology shold include a sincere statement of profound regret and remorse. There should be no qualifying statements in it whatsoever.

I would say pass an amendment to the constitution that forbids official declarations like this.

On behalf of the entire country a public official should apologize? Apologies are moral issues. This is very much like a religious issue. Let private people speak out as they choose, but keep the government out of it.

Now if an individual politician wants to express his own feelings on this, then perhaps taking the course you’ve suggested might be a good idea.

Renew the Asian Women’s Fund, to which the Government of Japan was the primary donor, and continue to allow private donations. However, make the role of the Government of Japan in the Fund explicit and public. Make it clear that the Fund is an inadequate attempt to make amends for something wrong that was done by the Government of Japan.

Having a fund like this is fine. But I don’t think it should be tied to the government. However, instead of people like Junichiro Koizumi going to Yasukuni Shrine to say a prayer, a very public (but non-official) donation and endorsement would serve Japan’s purposes better.

Insist that public school history textbooks and school curricula addressing the War or issues related to it give equally proportionate space and attention to episodes of Japan’s wrongdoing as to episodes favorable to Japan.

So long as education is controlled by the center, then any mistakes at the center will immediately be distributed nationwide. The fundamental mistake is not that Japanese textbooks have the wrong history, but that the government should be in charge of what children learn. Again, these are almost religious issues. History is a narrative that instructs. What history should be taught is a very personal choice. The government should not be involved at all.

Overall, though I disagree with some pretty fundamental things in this TPR editorial, I do agree that humbleness would far better fit Japan’s leaders. Instead Japan’s leaders are content to fuel the flames of nationalism at home and abroad.